1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a unique combination of a memory quilt fabricated from greeting cards, and a method of utilizing greeting cards.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Greeting cards are widely used in society today as communications of remembrance to friends and family members, particularly upon holidays and upon other special occasions, such as birthdays and anniversaries. Greeting cards are typically constructed of rectangular sheets of card stock, often folded, and usually preprinted with messages that often includes art work as well as verbal passages of text. The recipients of conventional greeting cards are pleased to receive greeting messages, due largely to a sense of appreciation for being remembered on the occasion of a special event or a holiday by those they hold dear.
Because the cards containing the messages are the tangible manifestation of the thoughts of remembrance and of greetings from persons for whom they have a special fondness or friendship, the recipients of conventional greeting cards often save the cards, although those cards are often packed in drawers or boxes and stored out of sight. After a time, however, an excessive space is required in order to store accumulated greeting cards. The cards are usually thrown away eventually. Consequently, conventional greeting cards typically cease to perform any useful function once they are received, and do create a storage problem especially where storage space is limited.
In a heretofore unrelated activity, many persons who have some degree of skill in the sewing arts construct quilts which are known as memory quilts. In a typical memory quilt construction, patches of fabric material are often printed or embroidered with mottos, poems, proverbs, thought provoking and philosophical sayings and art work, all of which have some special meaning to the person making the memory quilt. Once a sufficient number of patches have been created in such a fashion so as to collectively extend over a suitable area, the edges of the patches are sewn together to form an outer quilt layer. The outer quilt layer is laid atop a soft, padded intermediate layer, which in turn is disposed atop an expansive fabric backing sheet. The three layers are then sewn together with intersecting sets of parallel lines of quilt stitching to form a finished quilt.
Heretofore, however, the construction of memory quilts has been very time consuming and has required considerable skill in the sewing arts to cut and arrange the fabric patches together so that their edges lie along sets of neat, straight lines. Consequently, memory quilts have been produced by only a relatively few number of people who are both skilled enough in the sewing arts to construct such quilts, and who also have the time available to engage in this activity.